And you thought your older siblings were bossy.
The crown prince is back in town, and he’s not at all happy with the state of the Shirayunion. His concern over his brother’s recent perceived dalliances leads to a series of confrontations and surprise meetings which shake Shirayuki’s confidence, leave the usually self-assured Zen off-balance and defensive, and provide our young couple with the first real challenge to their relationship.
Things’re really heating up, and I ain’t just talking about these August temperatures.
The summer season is halfway(-ish) over but it feels like many of its shows are just getting started. Some shaky premieres nevertheless rife with potential have taken off in recent weeks, building momentum through character and plot development alike. My watch list isn’t quite as deep as it was in, say, the winter season, nor are the shows quite as across-the-board ambitious, but there’s a lot of variety, and the pure entertainment level is maybe higher than it’s been all year. I’m genuinely excited for the next episode of just about everything, and that’s a very good sign.
As for what I’m most excited about, you’ll just have to hit the jump to find out.
This week’s forecast: Cloudy with a chance of bigotry.
Maaaan, but GANGSTA can be mighty bleak sometimes. I’m not complaining, mind you, as it does “pensive and faintly tragic” exceptionally well, but there were moments that were so quietly, matter-of-factly sad that the sky wasn’t the only thing that felt like crying. This really isn’t a show interested in making you want to go out and raise some hell in Ergastulum in the way that, say, Black Lagoon or Baccano did; it knows its world is deeply broken, and it makes that emphatically clear to its audience.
It’s ‘bout to get Sailor Moon SuperSurreal up in here.
The comments after last week’s S finale were almost entirely about how divisive this new season is among fans, which oddly enough made me even MORE stoked to watch it. Where will I fall on the SuperScale? Will I enjoy this arc warts and all? Or despise it with the fires of a thousand suns?
Sweet sixteen and never been kissed?
I considered doing this entire post in nothing but reaction gifs, partly just to see if I could (writing exercise, y’all!) and partly because a series of squeeing, laughing, and blushing faces is a perfect summary of what “My Birthday” did to me.
I’ve said before that OreMono is more than “just” a cute rom-com—it has worthwhile things to say and it generally says them very well. But lest we forget, episodes like this are around to remind us that, at the end of the day, OreMono is still very much a cute rom-com, which means that outside of all its thoughtful gender role commentary and genre-defying story lines, it is, first and foremost, a show that wants to make you feel things. It wants to make you root for its couple, and it wants to make you laugh. And speaking purely in terms of those goals, this is one of OreMono’s best episodes to date.
All work and no play makes Snow White a sleepy girl.
This seems to be the week where I start my posts by praising the production, so let’s go ahead and do that, because Snow White deserves plenty of accolades for what it’s managed to accomplish over five weeks. Successfully adapting a work is no easy task (although studio BONES has one of the better track records in that respect, despite some hit-and-miss anime-original endings), but having read this far into the manga, I can say with zero reservations that Director Ando and his creative team have not only produced an anime that surpasses the source material, but have done it in a way that makes it look darn near effortless.
Consider my production complaints temporarily revoked.
Hot damn, did this episode look good. Thanks to some fluid fight sequences, gorgeous shot selection, and snappy camera movement, “Sanctions” maintained tension and excitement without sacrificing coherency or thematic unity to do it. The scenes flowed from action to exposition more-or-less seamlessly, mixing the clash of swords into the background to remind us what was happening just off-screen, and even the music caught my ear in a good way thanks to a slow, jazzy piano number that merged the violence on-screen with the undercurrent of tragedy that’s present even during the show’s most high-octane moments.
So, yeah. I liked the look of this one a whole helluva lot.
So this past week I found out about a little something called the Liebster Awards, because two lovely people, krystallina at Daiyamanga and crimson613 at My Fujoshi Life, were kind enough to nominate me for it. Which, first and foremost: THANK YOU! I’m super flattered and seriously grateful that you both thought of me.
The thing is… I’m not sure I’m actually eligible for it.
Well, whaddaya know. All this time, and it turns out the S stood for samsara.
Unlike the past two seasons, where the villain was defeated and all loose ends wrapped up in a whiplash-inducing 22 minutes, this time around Sailor Moon takes a hefty chunk of time to give us a proper denouement. It’s arguably too much time, but if it means I get a chance to digest the finale and say long goodbyes to some friends, then I don’t much mind. Plus I can keep the recaps short and cram a season retrospective in at the very end, and that’s always a nice bonus, too.
Add another episode to your Anime Club’s Holiday Party Watch List!
I always find it kind of awkward when shows have holiday episodes nowhere near the actual holiday. Presumably the original manga for this one was first published around December as a nice little single-chapter seasonal story, but the anime doesn’t have that luxury, so here we are with August on the horizon and nary a Christmas tree in sight. Ah, well. It’s not as if Director Asaka could’ve skipped it, given that it features Actual Plot Points, so I’ll just have to shake off my sense of seasonal disconnect and do my best to talk about the episode as-is.
The Josei Next Door 